Safety solutions

Safety engineering for machine builders

For machine builders machine industrial safety plays a major role in daily life. Dangerous areas come in all shapes and sizes in the world of industrial manufacturing. Machine safety is a must because it saves human lives and resources.

With a huge and diversified product range of safety products Panasonic supports customers to find their individual safety solution to prevent accidents. Photoelectric safety components such as safety light curtains, light barriers, or laser scanners are a good choice as they do not require a lot of space and are highly visible. Safety light curtains for hand, arm and finger protection come in various protective heights.

Panasonic aims for complete safety solutions, offering safety light curtains, muting sensors, safety switches, and safety control units. The individual components are compatible with each other and therefore easy to connect and configure. Whenever machinery or products are in motion, there is danger for people working in the area. With our MINAS A6 series we offer a servo drive with integrated safety functions. This way, we can provide solutions for applications involving e.g. cutting or packaging machines.

Furthermore it is important for us to offer our customers a global solution. Our products fulfill global standards such as CE, TUV, UL, CSA , Korean S Mark so that they can be installed wherever you need to protect your workforce.

Worker entry detection

SF4B: The SF4B provides a fast response time of 14ms regardless of the number of beam channels, the beam axis pitches, and the number of units connected in series. This reduces calculation work required for determining the safety distance.

Detection of ingress into operating area of manufacturing equipment

SF4B-C: The SF4B-C series can be installed flush in an aluminum frame for maximum use of the available opening. In addition, it can be installed with zero dead space.

Safety measures for machine exits (exit muting control function)

SF4C: Muting at the exit of a machine is now possible using the handy controller SFC-HC. Simply set a delay time of max. 4 seconds for the muting sensor. This reduces costs and wiring.

Ensuring safety around automatic guided vehicles

SD3-A1: The safety laser scanner is used to slow down the speed of the vehicle when it is detected in the warning zone. Once it reaches the protection zone, the vehicle is stopped.

Connection of up to 5 SF4D safety light curtains in series

SF4D: Possible to build up a complete housing for several robot stations. Up to 5 units of SF4D can be connected in series. Furthermore the SF4D inherits the no-blind zone design of the SF4B series. Even in an L-shaped or U-shaped layout, the beam pitch does not change (excluding finger protection type). This makes the calculation of the safety distance easier.

The Sistema program helps you evaluate the safety of machine controllers according to DIN EN ISO 13849-1. This software allows you to simulate the safety-related control functions according to predefined architectures. The program automatically calculates the reliability values for various detail levels and the overall performance level (PL) attained.

Panasonic developed a library for you so that you can assess the risks for your machine using our products as simply as possible. You can download Panasonic's Sistema library, which is available in German and English. After you have imported the library into the Sistema program, all necessary component data for subsystems are available to you so that you can perform a comprehensive risk assessment.